The Feel of Hands
by embroiderama
Summary: Dean’s dreams and Sam’s nightmares take them somewhere they never meant to go.
1. The Feel of Hands

Title: The Feel of Hands

Author: embroiderama

E-mail: chart challenge, first sexual encounter

Characters: Sam/Dean

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: wincest (sort of), rape/non-con, child abuse

Spoilers: nothing specific

Word Count: 7279

Disclaimer: None of the Winchesters belong to me, alas.

Summary: Dean's dreams and Sam's nightmares take them somewhere they never meant to go.

Notes: The title comes from a poem by Thom Gunn. You can find the text of the poem here. I totally made up the town where this is set, so please forgive me if it actually exists. Time-wise, this is set somewhere during the first season.

On formatting: In this story, I'm using to denote scene changes and to denote changing points of view. I hope it will all be clear, but I figured I ought to explain, just in case.

Thank you to janissa11 for a wonderful, fast beta that helped make this story much better than it was. Any remaining weirdness is all my fault.

_Dean could never remember how they had gotten to this moment. He could never recall how they had ended up in his bed together, who had touched first, who had looked. He knew only the moment, and the moment was only pleasure--sweet, hot, pleasure rising up through his body and filling him until even the sense of not knowing was washed away._

_Sam's hands on his shoulders, pressing him down into the bed. His own hands, braced over Sam's ribs, which swelled and relaxed under his fingers. Slick with the sweat from his hands and Sam's chest, Sam's chest which was hovering over him, even as their legs entwined._

_Sam's slim hips pressed into his own, and Sam's hard length brushed his thigh, teasing him, letting him know that Sam was just as far gone as he was. He tuned into Sam's breathing, ragged with sharp inhales, shuddering, hanging above him, his mouth open, his eyes pressed closed as he came, spilling warmth onto Dean's stomach._

_As Sam slumped down, a delicious weight on Dean's chest, Dean pushed up on his brother's shoulders, turning them both, rolling until he was on top. So close-- He was--He bent to kiss Sam, pressing his tongue into his soft mouth, while his cock rubbed over his firm thigh, and it was enough. The pleasure that was everything washed over him, and he came, collapsing down, half on Sam, half on the bed._

_Before he let himself fall asleep, he raised his head just enough to look at Sam. Taking in the soft, happy smile on his brother's face, Dean drifted off._

And then he woke up, panting and pissed off with himself that he had fucking spooged all over the sheets again. Damnit, it was like being 13 again. Dean couldn't really hold onto the anger, though, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn't even hold onto the disgust he felt with himself Really, he thought, what the hell is wrong with you, dude? Dreaming about fucking Sammy?

But he couldn't hold onto the self-disgust any more than he could the anger. Thinking about the dreams, they were just so -- beautiful. They felt so good, not just the sex, it was everything, the warm feeling of that familiar skin under his hands, the smile on Sam's face afterwards. And wasn't that a hell of a thing to see?

A smile had been a rare enough thing to see in the last few months anyway, and the last couple of days things had gotten worse. Sam was having nightmares again, though he refused to tell Dean what they were about. They weren't predicting anything, that was all Sam would give up, and he swore there were no headaches, but Dean wasn't sure what to think.

Even now, Sam looked like he was in pain. Clearly having another nightmare, he was twisted on his side on the bed, his face tightening in pain. Dean couldn't stand to watch it again. He slid across his own bed and reached over to lay a hand on Sam's tense forehead.

"Sammy," he whispered, "wake up."

"No!" Sam's eyes snapped open, and he sat up, knocking Dean's hand away.

Dean blinked at the abrupt reaction. "You okay?"

Sam took a breath and started to nod, then suddenly pushed himself out of bed, his long legs propelling him to the bathroom in a couple of steps. The bathroom door slammed shut, but Dean could hear his brother being sick through the barrier of thin plywood.

Damn it. For three days now, Sam kept telling Dean that he wasn't having headaches, wasn't having visions, wasn't coming down with anything, was just fine, thank you, but every morning he woke up sick from nightmares.

When he hadn't heard any more heaving for a minute, Dean knocked on the door. "Sam, you okay in there?"

Dean shifted in shock as he heard the lock snapping into place.

"Just leave me alone, Dean."

"Dude, what's going on with you?"

"Dean, please!"

The hard edge of panic in Sam's voice made him step back away from the door. "Okay, relax."

"I'll just—" Sam's voice broke off, and Dean wondered if he imagined the harsh breath that was almost a sob. "I'll be out in a minute."

But Dean heard the shower come on, and the minute became several minutes. Finally Sam came out, dressed in his boxers and t-shirt again rather than wearing a towel. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"Don't worry about it." Dean glanced at Sam's face, which was pale and thinner than it had been a week ago. "You look like shit, you know?"

"Just lay off, Dean."

Sam sounded exhausted, even though he had just woken up, but Dean knew that he couldn't push any further, not right then. "Just let me get cleaned up, and we can go get some breakfast before hitting the public records office."

By the time Dean was done watching Sam poke tiredly at breakfast, he was beginning to be glad that this job was turning out to be nothing going nowhere.

In the absence of any better leads, they had decided to check out Farmington, Minnesota, a town that had supposedly been haunted for nearly 150 years. For the last couple of days, they'd been exploring the place, talking to people, getting the stories. And there were a lot of stories, not that they had the good grace to form into any kind of coherent whole. They had decided to commit a day to Dean's least favorite aspect of hunting--the public records search. Though Dean felt like this kind of research was a very tedious kind of torture, his dad had taught him how to dig up leads from the old records, how to bring the facts of the past into focus.

By late afternoon, Dean decided to take pity on Sam, whose eyes looked so bleary they couldn't have been taking in much by that point, and call a halt to the records search. Back at the motel, he watched Sam drop onto the bed and sit with his hands dangling between his knees.

He put a hand on Sam's shoulder and only quirked up an eyebrow when Sam shook himself away from the touch. "Dude, why don't you lie down for a while? I'll go pick up dinner."

"Yeah, okay," Sam muttered, and Dean watched him quietly strip down to boxers and a t-shirt in the dim late-afternoon light. Dean had managed to avoid thinking about his dreams for most of the day, allowing the stream of random dates, names and addresses to fill his mind. Now, however, the contrast between the smiling, glowing Sam in his dreams and the sad, tired Sam of reality brought it all back to mind.

He didn't want to be with his brother, not like that. He didn't want to fuck his brother, for God's sake, but he did wish he could see that broad smile on Sam's face more often.

Giving it up as a lost cause for the moment, he shook his head and left the room.

_Sam never remembered how it had happened. Sometimes he felt like he'd always been here, in this moment, and when he felt that he knew that there was no hope. He had been trying to keep his eyes closed, trying to play the old child's game of if-I-can't-see-you-you-can't-see-me, but when he felt the tip of the knife dig into his ribs, the fragile illusion shattered._

_When he opened his eyes, he saw again the terrible thing that had driven him into darkness: Dean. Above him, looming, his bare body crouched above Sam's own, holding a knife sharpened by hours on the whetstone. Sam had seen a lot of looks on his brother's face in the past: anger and hatred and lust and calculation, but never this terrible combination of all that and more, directed at himself. Dean's smirk cut into him as deeply as the knife slicing the skin over his already-bruised ribs._

"_Come on Sammy, time to get down to business." _

_Dean's sure, deft, and now pitiless hands grabbed him and turned him onto his stomach, shoved his knees under him. The same hands gripped Sam's shoulders hard enough to bruise and--God! Pain! He tasted his own bitter sweat in his mouth, and then blood as he bit his lip. Trying to swap one pain for the other. Failing. Dean pounded into him, setting off waves of sick heat that swamped him, pulling him down toward darkness. Something was ripping, something was coming apart, something in his body and something in his heart. "Stop! Please!"_

He woke with his legs folded underneath him on the bed and his hands cramped from clutching the sheets. The room was empty. Dean was still gone, oh God, thank you. He didn't want to see Dean, not right now. If he saw a flicker of that horrible grin, he might-- Shit, shit, it wasn't real Sam knew it hadn't happened, but he allowed himself to stay there, curled over his knees on the bed, holding his hands over his face, just breathing. Trying to breathe as though it didn't hurt, as though his ribs weren't bruised. The physical pain wasn't really there, not any more, but the pain in his heart throbbed like an infected hand.

He had to get up. Had to get out of the bed before Dean got back. He unfolded his legs, biting back a groan as tight ligaments stretched, and stood up fast. Too fast. The room lurched around him for a minute and he flung a hand out, holding onto the wall until he was sure his shaking legs would hold him up. As soon as the room stood still, he grabbed his jeans and pulled them up awkwardly, not wanting to sit back down on the bed.

The button didn't want to go in the hole. Shit, shit, pull it together. He took a deep, shaky breath, and let it out slowly, feeling a little bit of steadiness seep into his body. No sleeping tonight, he decided. I can't take it again. Not so soon.

He just wished he understood why this nightmare kept reoccurring. It was positively, definitely not a vision. He knew as certainly as he knew his own name, because Dean would never hurt him like that. The only times Dean had ever hurt him had been in training, when they had to spar, testing their strength against each other, and even then, Sam could see in his brother's eyes that he hated seeing the bruises left by their matches.

But all of that was logic. Perfect, symmetrical, logical bricks that he was using as a wall to protect himself from the memory of the nightmares. He worried that if he didn't built that wall fast enough and high enough, he was going to end up afraid of Dean, and he knew that would hurt his brother as much as knowing the content of his nightmares.

Feeling a chill from the air conditioning, Sam pulled a flannel shirt on over his t-shirt and sat down in the only chair in the room. Breathing. Trying to.

Dean took his time picking up dinner. He stopped in to check out the local bar and stayed long enough to get a drink. Sitting in a small booth by himself, he let his mind wander, bringing up the images from his recurring dreams. As the whiskey burned a warm path down his throat, he found himself wondering how the dreams compared to reality. Was the skin on Sam's hips really that smooth? Did his face really look like that, sublime and a little ridiculous, when he came? And would it really feel so good--

Holy fucking Jesus. He had to either stop drinking or start drinking a whole lot more if this was where his mind was going to go when he relaxed. He put a ten under his glass and left the bar. Maybe Sam had managed to get some sleep so that they could get some more work done after dinner.

When Dean showed up with the pizza and antipasto salad he'd picked up, he found Sam already awake, looking just as pinched and tired as he had earlier. They ate dinner with the TV on ESPN for background music, and when they were finished Dean nodded over at Sam. "Hey, you up for going to check out some of those abandoned houses tonight?"

"Yeah, Dean, I'm fine."

"'Cause I can go by myself if you want to hang here."

Sam's quiet laugh sounded forced and hollow. "Like this is such a great place. No, let's go."

Dean's hand twitched, wanting to reach out and touch Sam, on his hand, or his shoulder, _or behind his head, pulling him in for a soft kiss_. No. Dean shook his hand out, as if he could dispel the images with the motion, and reached down to grab a bag of supplies.

They spent the evening driving around to the old, abandoned houses that had pinged their remained resolutely silent, and with Sam keeping his own silence beside him, Dean thought it was an irritatingly quiet night.

When they got back to the room, Dean was ready to go to bed, but Sam settled himself in at the table, with the laptop hooked up to the hotel phone line. "Will it bother you if I stay up a while to do some research?"

Damn. He couldn't force Sam to sleep, but it sure wasn't worth fighting about it. "Nah, I'm just gonna crash." He rolled into his bed, turning so that the glow of the laptop screen was behind him, and closed his eyes.

_He ran his tongue up the center of Sam's stomach from his navel to the hollow of his neck, catching the sweet, salty taste of clean sweat on his tongue. Sam chuckled low in his throat, and Dean felt the vibration in his mouth. Sam ducked his head down to nudge Dean's head up, and their lips caught, the kiss forming a conduit of pleasure between them. Dean's cock hardened, and he moaned as he felt Sam getting hard, too, against his thigh._

"_In me, Dean, please." Sam wrapped his long, powerful legs around Dean's back and pushed him upward with his heels. Dean prepared himself, and this didn't feel new. This was something he knew how to do, something that would feel so good, and he slid inside Sam's body with ease._

_He had a flicker of thought in the back of his mind. Hadn't he tried this with a woman? Hadn't it been hard? But the hypnotic force of Sam's smile and the soft, sweet sounds he made drew him back into the moment. Sam was all around him, holding him, chest bracing him below, his heat gripping Dean, bringing him to the place where there was nothing else and no one else. And then he came, hot sparks inside of him, and he flopped down, felt Sam's come slipping in between them, and closed his eyes._

He woke up with damp shorts again, and this time Sam was awake, working at the little table, studiously not looking at Dean. This, Dean thought, was one of those times when a little more privacy would be a super thing.

"Morning."

"Yeah," Sam mumbled, still focusing on the laptop screen.

Dean looked over at the still-unmade bed, at Sam wearing the same clothes he had last night. "You know, if you didn't plan on sleeping, we could have got a single."

Sam cut a sideways glance at Dean but didn't immediately respond. When he spoke, his voice sounded lower than usual and washed out. "You want to hit the shower so we can get to the library and check out the old papers?"

"Yeah, hold your horses."

In the shower, scrubbing his stomach clean, Dean closed his eyes and wished he knew what the hell was going on with his brother. Sam swore it wasn't a vision, but what else could this be? And what kind of a vision would he refuse to tell Dean about?

Out of the shower, Dean dried himself off with ruthless speed. Back in the room, pulling on his clothes, he tried to think of a way to say it without stepping on Sam's delicate little toes too much. "Look, if something's going on that I need to know about--"

"There isn't." Flat, tired.

"Well, if there is, I'll kick your ass if you don't tell me," Dean continued, his tone kinder than the words.

"It's just--" Sam paused, then stood up and started packing up his notes for the trip to the library. "Just leave it alone, Dean."

At the diner, eating breakfast, Dean found himself growing even more concerned and frustrated with Sam's behavior.

"Just coffee? Man, this is so not you, it's not even funny. You're usually Mr. 'Bring me the super grand slam with extra eggs and a bagel to shove down my hollow leg.' So, who the fuck am I having breakfast with, Sam?"

Dean hopes that Sam would be pissed, would push back, but he just shook his head tiredly.

"I don't know. Look, I'm sorry, Dean, I just can't right now."

Sam's voice sounded so hopeless, like he really didn't know, like he really couldn't, and Dean didn't have the heart to push him anymore. And if Sam's hands were shaking a little from exhaustion, the coffee cup rattling just slightly in the saucer, Dean didn't know what he could do about it.

After breakfast they drove to the town library and set up shop on adjoining microfilm machines. The library had the last 110 years of the local paper on microfilm, so they each took a decade and started looking for leads. About four hours in, Dean suddenly realized that he hadn't heard the whir of Sam's machine for the last few minutes.

He grinned a little when he saw that Sam had fallen asleep, his chin resting on his chest, his broad shoulders rounded forward and slumping down. Dean couldn't help grinning, because Sam asleep always looked more like Sammy, and he rewound his microfilm reel and boxed it up before reaching over to wind up Sam's for him.

When he came back from putting the little boxes up on their shelf, he noticed that Sam wasn't resting so peacefully anymore. His face was drawn up, as though wincing away from some kind of pain, and his shoulders jerked, pulling in more tightly toward his body. Dean leaned down to put a hand on his brother's shoulder and shook it gently.

"Hey, Sam, wake--"

"NO!" Sam's head snapped up, clocking Dean under the chin and sending him reeling back. Sam jerked sideways and tumbled off of his chair, scrambled back until he was against the cubicle divider. "Stop! Please!"

Dean shook himself out of his shock when he noticed a library staff member walking toward them. He crouched in front of Sam, who was looking straight forward but didn't seem to be seeing anything in front of him. "Sam, Sammy, wake up," he whispered, feeling an ache in his jaw from the impact with Sam's head.

"Excuse me, sir, is there a problem here?" The woman stood over them, frowning as she took in Sam's huddled form.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, my brother has, uh, he has panic attacks. Just let me get him calmed and we'll get out of here."

"Does he need some water or something?"

"No, thank you, we're fine." He looked at her, wordlessly begging her to leave them alone.

"Okay, I hope he feels better soon."

Dean nodded, and thought, "me too," before kneeling back down in front of Sam.

Sam was still pulling in tight breaths that sounded like they hurt, but he looked a little more awake in his eyes. "Sam, you okay?"

"Dean, what's goin' on?" Sam sounded like he did when he was twelve, and Dad used to wake them in the middle of the night to go out on a hunt.

"That's what I'd like to know."

"I mean, where? The library?"

"Yeah, speaking of that, let's go back to the room." He stood and reached a hand down toward Sam. "Come on."

He levered Sam's long body to his feet and then watched as Sam went a shade paler and pressed his eyes closed. "You gonna hurl?"

"Uh," Sam swallowed and the blinked his eyes open. "I don't think so."

Dean nodded and pulled him toward the door. "Let's get out of here."

By the time Dean pulled the Impala up in front of the motel, Sam knew he'd been wrong about the hurling. As the images from the dream came back to him, he tasted bile in his mouth, and before the car was even in neutral, he jumped out. He was bent over the toilet, losing the coffee from breakfast, when he heard Dean walk into the motel room. The fear inside him said, "Shut the door," and so he did, slapping the bathroom door shut behind him and pressing the little lock down.

He'd gotten rid of the coffee, but no amount of heaving could purge him of the remnants of the dream that remained in his head.

_Dean was on top of him, shoving into him from behind, and then he reached around to the front and wrapped his hand around Sam's penis. He pulled on it, rubbing his thumb across the head, and somehow that was worse than anything, worse than the pain and the penetration._

_He wished he had some strength. He wished he could resist the strength of the man on top of him, wished he could fight the swell of approaching climax that battered at him, despite the revulsion that overwhelmed everything. He thought he remembered being strong once, but now it was all gone._

_The hand wrapped around his penis sped up, and then he couldn't help it, he was coming, and he felt tears rolling down his face. The weight on top of him slammed in harder, deeper, until Dean shouted out in climax and then pulled out of him with a painful wrench. "You're the best fuck I've had in a week, Sammy."_

He didn't have the strength to heave anymore, but he managed to crawl into the shower stall and turn the water up to hot. He didn't know if he'd ever feel warm again.

Dean seriously considered breaking the door down or at least picking the lock, but the terrified look Sam had given him in the library made him hesitate. When the heaving stopped and the shower started, Dean just paced a little harder, fingering the tiny lock-pick kit in his pocket and keeping one eye on the clock.

Ten minutes passed, and he decided that when it hit fifteen he was just going in. Two minutes later, the water shut off, and then Sam walked out of the bathroom in drenched clothes, looking like he'd been caught in a major downpour.

"Sam--"

"Look, I'm sorry about acting like a freak back there." Sam lingered in the bathroom doorway, bracing himself with a hand on the frame. "Can we just forget about it?"

"No, I'm sorry, Sam. I can't, we can't. Can't you see that this is totally fucked up?"

Sam slid down to sit with his back against the wall, hit wet jeans dripping onto the carpet. "They're just nightmares. It's just--you know, there's been a lot of stress. It's normal, normal brain activity."

Dean folded himself down on the floor across from Sam. "You've got to at least tell me what's going on in your head. You sound--" He paused, sniffing in a quick breath. "It sounds like somebody's hurting you."

"Aw, Dean, it's just sick, you know? I can't sit here and tell you about it."

"Who the hell else are you going to tell? Because I swear, Sam, if you pull another stunt like today I'm taking you to the goddamn emergency room, and you can tell a doctor about it. I'm not messing around here anymore."

"No, Dean--"

"And I'm sure as hell glad that this town is turning out to be a dead end, because you can't watch my back or your own as whacked out as you are right now. If we came up against something serious right now, we might both get killed."

Sam hung his head, looking beaten. "That's not fair."

"No, not really, but I don't know how to help you with this if you won't tell me what's going on."

Sam sighed and sat for a minute, staring at the wall across the room. "It's, ah, sex. Somebody's having sex with me"

Dean blinked in shock. "What, like a wet dream?"

"Not exactly."

Dean shook his head, trying to understand. "So, it's a sex dream, but not-- God, Sam, is it that somebody's forcing you?"

Sam drew in a ragged breath and rocked back a little against the wall, pressing his mouth closed until it was a tight line. Finally, looking anywhere but at Dean, he nodded.

"Who?"

"I don't want--"

Not thinking, just needing to know, Dean rolled forward, reaching out to grab Sam's arm in his hand. "Who!"

And then he heard Sam's panicked breathing and looked up to see his brother's wide, terrified eyes focusing in on the place where Dean's hand gripped his arm. Dean felt something die inside him and let go as though he'd burned his hand. "Me?" He felt like he might get sick himself. "It was me."

And then he realized that Sam was crying, and he wished that he was dead.

"Ah, god, Sam, please don't."

Sam sniffled wetly. "It's not your fault. It doesn't mean anything, Just, like I said. Stress, random thoughts. Nightmares."

"So you have a random thought that I would, that I would ever do something like that?" Except that he had, in his own dreams. Not that he would ever hurt Sam, never hurt him like that, but he was touching him, the way he had no right to.

"No, Dean, I swear. I don't know why it's you."

"But why would you even be thinking about something like that happening, with anyone? I mean, nothing like that ever happened to you. Right?"

Sam was quiet, looking across the room again.

"Sam? Right?"

"It was a long time ago."

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Sammy. No." Dean shook his head, not wanting to accept what Sam was telling him. He looked at Sam, knew that he would never lie about something like this, and the knowledge that it had to be true hit him like a fist. "I mean--what? Who--who--what happened?"

"It wasn't--wasn't like the nightmare. And it was a long time ago."

"Who?" Dean asked, quietly this time, already thinking about all the ways he could kill, all the weapons in the trunk, all the moves he learned from dad and Bobby. The knife with the wicked curved blade, that would open the fucker up nice and bloody.

"You remember the apartment we had in Toledo? When I was eight?"

"Oh, god, Sam," Dean rasped, trying to respond like a normal person. "Yeah, I remember it."

"The landlady, Mrs. Tortelli, used to baby sit me when you and Dad were both out."

"Yeah, I remember her. But, shit, Mrs. Tortelli?"

"No, no. This one week her grandson was visiting, from Oregon. He was in high school. She let him watch me when she had to go to a doctor's appointment one day."

"Son of a bitch. He hurt you? What was his name?" Once the knife had done its work, he would crush his windpipe slowly, slowly.

"He just, you know. He touched me. I didn't like it, and I knew it was wrong, but--"

"Why didn't you tell Dad? Why didn't you tell ME, Sam?"

"I didn't want to have to leave. I liked Mrs. Tortelli, and I knew he was only there for a couple more days. It's just. We were there for almost a year, Dean. It felt like home."

"What was his name?" Dean whispered, feeling like his heart was going to implode.

"It doesn't matter."

"I need to know!"

"He's dead, Dean." Sam made eye contact for the first time in what felt like forever. "I looked him up in the news databases at Stanford, and I found out he killed himself a couple of years after it, after it happened."

"Good riddance."

"You know he was probably--"

"He hurt you, Sam. I. Don't. Give. A shit." Unable to hold the angry energy inside any longer, Dean pushed up to standing and started to pace again. "I should have known. Dad should have known. I should have seen it."

Sam stayed on the floor, his long legs pulled in to leave room for Dean's stalking pace. "I didn't let you see. It's not your fault."

"Well, it's not your fault either!" Dean didn't know what else to say, and he didn't know what to do. He wanted to go over and sit next to Sam, but he didn't know how well that would go over. He wanted to get Sam to go to sleep, but even as exhausted as Sam was, as much as he needed sleep, Dean didn't think he could take another one of those nightmares right now.

"Dean?"

He walked back over to crouch down in front of Sam. "Yeah?"

"I've got to ask you about something. I'm not sure if-- Everything's felt so weird the last couple of days, I'm not sure if I'm going crazy here or what."

This isn't going to be good, Dean thought. With a bad taste in his mouth, he replied, "Sure, what?"

"You're having dreams, too." Sam's tone was flat; it wasn't a question. "I've heard you, and it sounds like--"

"Everybody dreams, it's nothing, just--"

Sam shook his head, looking bitter. "That's what I said about mine, but you wouldn't buy it. I've heard you, and it sounds like, you know…"

"Geez, I can't help--"

"And you're saying my name, Dean! I heard it. I think I did. Or am I really losing it here?"

Again, Dean wished he could just be dead so that he didn't have to have this conversation. He wanted to deny it, deny the crazy shit he'd been dreaming, but he didn't think he could do that to Sam. Dean looked over at his brother, who was sitting on the floor in wet clothes and questioning his own sanity, and he knew he couldn't lie to him.

"It doesn't mean anything. I think it's just because I'm worried about you, you know."

"I don't get it. You're worried about me so you dream that you're FUCKING me?"

"No! Damn it, I don't know how to say this without it sounding like some kind of chick flick bullshit."

"How could it be worse than this?" Sam's voice was bleak, exhausted.

And wasn't that true, Dean thought. He felt like he'd been betraying Sam, betraying him with his dreams, and it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for Sam, either, remembering this kind of shit, having nightmares about it, and who can he talk to other than his brother, who seems to have turned into some kind of a crazy pervert. Except it wasn't like that.

"You just seem so happy," he finally said, quietly.

"What? Now?"

"No. No. In the dreams, when we, you know. You seem happy, and that's what makes it good." Dean took a deep breath, speaking more quickly now. "And that's why I think it's because I'm worried about you. You're fucking miserable now, so I see you happy in my dreams. I guess it just turns out like it does because I've got a one-track mind or something. I don't know."

Sam looked like he was thinking about it, and when he shook his head, Dean felt his stomach sink. "When did your dreams start?"

"I'm not sure."

"Yes, you are. It's not the kind of thing you forget, is it? It was the first night we got here, wasn't it."

"Yeah. So what?"

"That's the same time my, uh, my nightmares started. So why would you have been worried about me before that?"

"I worry about you all the time. That's my job."

Sam looked over at him with sad eyes. "But you weren't especially worried, were you? Everything was normal, or what passes for normal with us."

"I guess. What, do you think I have some other reason to be dreaming this shit?"

"Dean, this isn't normal."

"I'm sorry! I can't help--"

"No, I mean the intrusiveness of these dreams. Nightmares. The persistence from night to night, any time I let myself fall asleep. I thought it was just me, that I was losing it, but I don't think both of us would be cracking at the same time." Sam cocked an eyebrow at Dean. "Something is doing this to us."

"The room came up clean on the EMF."

"Even if we missed it, if it's bound to this place it couldn't have caused my nightmare in the library. You know, I think there might be something in the laptop. Something about a dream-inducing demon."

Dean dredged up a smirk. "You mean we might have found our kind of job here after all?"

"I hope so, because that kind of thing, at least we can fight it." Sam pushed himself off the floor, frowning as his damp jeans clung to his legs.

Dean dug around in the laundry bag and pulled out some semi-clean sweats. "Here, put something dry on, dude." Dean smiled a little as he handed the bundle over to Sam, but the smile dropped as soon as Sam turned around and headed into the bathroom, behind the closed door, to change. He had to hope that they could fight this--and fix it--because the way things stood just sucked out loud.

"I found it." It was the first thing Sam had said since he came out of the bathroom and settled in at the table. Before Sam had left for college, Pastor Jim had let him spend some quality time with some of his old reference books and a scanner, so now they had a library of supernatural reference materials on the laptop and backed up onto sets of CD's that were stored in their lockboxes. Fully searchable PDF's, got to love them.

Dean sat down at the small table, and Sam pushed the laptop over to face him.

**Morpheate Demon:**

Minor demon related to the incubi. Inhabits dreams. Draws out hidden fears and desires from the victim. Victims often driven insane by recurring dreams or nightmares. Demons typically targets travelers who sleep in woodland areas.

Demon can be hunted in the nest area on the night of the new moon with a sword charged under a full moon for three nights. Can also be fought from inside the dream where the demon is embodied. Follow normal procedures for lucid dreaming.

The rest area. The shitty, empty, rural rest area they slept in the night before getting to Farmington. He hated sleeping in those places, but they had both been too tired to drive straight, and it was a warm night, comfortable enough for a few hours, as long as the windows were rolled down to let in some air. He should have just sucked it up, hit the supply of old Stackers, anything other than leaving them vulnerable.

Too late now to close that particular barn door. All he could do was try to fix it.

"Sam, where are we with the moon? Waxing crescent?"

"One week past the new moon." Sam wiped a hand over his face and looked over at Dean. "We can't wait that long."

We can't wait another day, Dean thought, or you're going to crack in half. "I know. You know how to do the dream thing, right? Jim taught you?"

"Let's do it." Sam squared his shoulders, as if he were trying to look stronger than he felt.

"Remember, man, we've got more control in there. What we think makes a difference."

"Yeah." Sam sat down on the side of his bed and pressed his hand down into the comforter, gripping it a little. "We have to be touching, right?"

"I'm sorry, Sam. You're going to have to let me in the bed with you. I know you don't trust me--"

"I do, it's just--"

"It's okay, I understand."

"No, Dean. I've had 22 years of you watching my back and saving my ass and making me dinner. A few days of demon dreams can't mess that up. I'm just so tired, man, I don't know what to think."

"Okay," Dean nodded. "Let's do it."

Sam lay down on the bed, reclining tensely on his back, and Dean arranged himself next to Sam, trying not to encroach too much on his space. "I never thought I'd say this, but I think we'd better hold hands. So we don't lose contact in case one of us starts twitching or something."

"Okay," Sam muttered sleepily. Dean reached over and intertwined his wide fingers with his brother's longer ones. When he looked back up at Sam's face, Dean saw that he was already asleep. Time to fall asleep, he thought, but without that same weight of exhaustion pushing him down, Dean found it a difficult task.

He thought about his father, and the lessons he loved to share from his military days. You have to be able to fall asleep fast, son, get sleep while you can. Rest up to keep your strength up. Strength, Dean thought, that's what we need.

And then he was standing near the door in a room he'd never seen before. It was a boy's room, that was clear, with fifties-style kid's books in a wooden shelf and old trophies and cowboy wallpaper and a twin bed. And Sam on the bed, naked, on his back, his knees pushed up toward his head, his face red and twisting with tears.

When Dean looked at the thing on top of Sam, at first it was like looking in a nightmarish mirror, and then the image blinked out like an old TV set, and a demon hovered over his brother, jaws wide, eyes full of evil.

"Sammy!" Dean surged forward to push the demon off the bed, but he couldn't move more than half a step. A wall of solid air separated him from Sam.

"Sam!" Sam's head jerked up and turned toward Dean. "Sam, it's not me! Look at it, see what it really is."

"I can't," Sam moaned, crying out as the demon struck him across the face.

"You can." Dean channeled al of his confidence and his will into his voice. "Sammy, do it."

The demon's glamour flashed suddenly like fire and then it was only the inhuman shape, without Dean's face superimposed. Dean, still pushing against the barrier in front of him, found himself a step closer to the bed.

"Oh, god," Sam gasped, looking at the thing on top of him. "No."

"Sammy, fight it! If you fight it, I can help you."

"No, I can't," Sam whispered miserably.

"You can!" Dean shouted. "You are the son of John Winchester. You've been trained in combat for as long as you've been fucking potty-trained, and you can kick this demon's ass. DO IT!"

Sam kicked forward with his legs, and the demon tumbled off the back of the bed. Dean took another step closer, but he still couldn't reach Sam or the demon. The demon rose up from the floor and reached for the bed, but Sam got his knees under him and scrambled to his feet.

The demon moved on Sam, and Sam stepped backward, still clearly terrified.

"Under the bed, Sam! There's a sword under the bed," Dean shouted, believing it for all he was worth. There had to be a sword. There had to be. They had control here, in the dream.

Sam dropped to his knees on the floor and groped around under the bed. When he stood up, he held an unsheathed Navy officer sword.

"Good, Sam!" Dean called out, pressing forward another step. Only a thin layer of air separated him from Sam and the demon now.

"Rot in hell," Sam whispered. The demon hissed, but grew visibly weaker, now that it was no longer drawing energy from its victim. Sam sliced the blade through the air, and the demon collapsed in on itself, imploding to a point of darkness which then disappeared with a hiss of escaping air.

Sam collapsed onto the floor, and Dean surged forward, finally free of the barrier. Dean raced around the bed to kneel in front of Sam, who was leaning forward on his hands, breathing in deep sobs of air. Dean put his hand on Sam's shoulder and squeezed tight. "Good job, man. You kicked its ass."

Sam sat up a little and leaned forward, clasping his arms around Dean's shoulders. "We've got to wake up now. I want to get the hell out of here."

Dean closed his eyes, leaning his head against Sam's, and when he opened them he saw the walls of the motel room and realized that they were still in the same position, wrapped around each other on the bed. Dean pulled back quickly.

"Shit, I'm sorry, Sam."

"Don't apologize. You saved my life in there."

"You saved your own life, dude. I just had to remind you that you knew how."

Sam nodded, "It's weird, now. I don't know why I couldn't fight it; I just felt so small."

"It was in your mind, messing with you. It made you feel that way."

"Yeah, I guess. I think it was in there, though, somewhere. The demon just brought it out to play."

"No. I mean, small? You? The demon was pulling this shit out of a hat."

"Dean, it's okay. I know it's…weird, but people think weird things all the time, you know? In their heads? Doesn't mean you're going to do anything about it."

"No," Dean scoffed. "What are you talking about?"

"The book said fears and desires. It was feeding off my fears, but with you, it took your desires."

Dean pursed his lips, looked away. "You've got it wrong, Sam."

"I wish I could give you what you want, Dean."

"What I want! All I want is for you to be happy!"

Sam looked like he wasn't sure what to believe. With a sad smile he said, "I'll try."

"Yeah, you do that," Dean pushed out on a tense breath. "Why don't you get some sleep. It should be okay now. I'll wake you up when it's time to go get dinner."

Sam tried but failed to stifle a yawn. "Are you going to stick around? For a while?"

"I'll be here."

Dean watched Sam settle himself under the covers and then fall asleep between one breath and the next. He thought of Sam's face, sated and happy in his dreams, and twisted and miserable in Sam's nightmare. This Sam, the real Sam, exhausted but calm, apparently feeling safe enough to sleep, was neither here nor there, but Dean knew he could live with it.

He would have to live with all of it, for as long as it took.

The End.


	2. Coda: Shaken by Daylight

Notes: This is for obeetaybee. The title comes from the same Thom Gunn poem as TFOH.

Dean watched Sam sleep for a while, watched his pale face relax into the pillow, his long limbs lie still under the covers. He looked at his watch--barely noon. Shit, felt like a long goddamn day already, and it wasn't half over. Sammy needed to sleep; needed food too, but sleep was claiming precedence right now. The thought of stretching out on his own bed and taking a nap wouldn't be half bad, if it weren't for the images lurking behind his eyelids.

Sam on a bed, his face twisting in pain beneath the demon that wore Dean's face like a mask, like a weapon to hurt Sam more deeply. Sam in Dean's own dreams, flushed with satisfaction. But now Dean saw the smirking satisfaction of the demon there rather than the replete, happy Sam he'd imagined before. And behind it all, worst of all, the image of Sam at eight years old. Dean could see that apartment they'd rented from Mrs. Tortelli, could see Sam how he was then. Soft, round face. Dreamy kid, nose in a book half the time. And that twisted fucking little asshole had--shit.

Dean could remember everything, but he couldn't remember that kid's face. He thought he'd met him once, had passed the older boy once in the hallway, but he couldn't recall a single detail. Never should have gone on that hunt with Dad. Never should have trusted that Sam would be safe. Dean stood up from the bed, his muscles bunching and twitching beneath his skin, aching to hit, to chase, to just fucking do something to make this better. But there was nothing to be done.

Dean thought about Sam's sopping wet clothes sitting in the bathroom and decided that if he couldn't keep his brother safe at least he could do the laundry. Sam wouldn't be waking up anytime soon.

A few hours later, Dean let himself back into the room, two duffle bags of clean laundry slung over his shoulder, a newspaper folded under his arm and a big Styrofoam cup with a straw sticking out of it clutched in one hand. He'd washed all of their clothes and then grabbed lunch in the diner up the road from the motel. A hand-painted sign hanging over the cash register had advertised thick, old-fashioned milkshakes, and Dean thought six or seven of those would probably fill in the new hollows in Sam's cheeks.

Dean dropped the bags and the paper and shucked off his jacket before walking over to Sam's bed. He'd barely moved in the time Dean had been gone, the covers around him still smooth. Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and shook Sam's shoulder. "Hey."

Sam scrunched up his face, and as he opened his eyes Dean braced himself for a flash of fear, for a wary edge in that familiar face, but Sam just looked sleepy and a little annoyed at being disturbed. "Mmm, hey. What time's it?"

"Time for you to eat something. Come on, sit up."

Sam rolled his eyes and pushed himself upright, then he closed his eyes and swayed until he grabbed onto Dean's shoulder. When he opened his eyes again he looked steadier, and his sheepish smile loosened the clench in Dean's chest. "Yeah, I guess a snack would be good."

Dean handed the cup over and watched as Sam peeled back the translucent plastic lid to peek inside.

"Milkshake? Blueberry?"

"Yep. The good kind, too. None of that fake pretend shit"

Sam snapped the lid back down and looked back up, narrowing his eyes. "Did you taste my milkshake?"

"Would I do that?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Yeah, I totally would, but I didn't. The waitress gave me the leftover that wouldn't fit in there."

Sam shook his head and then stuck the straw in his mouth and took a long pull on the drink. "Mmmmm, damn," he hummed awkwardly around the straw. "You weren't kidding."

"Yeah, well, drink up Princess. You'll feel better." Dean stood and walked away from Sam's bed, grabbing the newspaper before sitting down on his own bed. He'd look for a new case. Something he could kill. Something that would die faster than this new pain ever would.


End file.
